Monday, June 27, 2005

I am obliged to a reader – a Mr Trellis of North Edinburgh – for drawing the attention of the world to the long lost links between my chosen home, North East Hampshire, and Rome, the cradle of civilization.I must disabuse Mr Trellis of the notion that I am in any way out of the country in mortal fear of this news breaking. The only reason that we have not gone public with this news earlier is that the village of Kingsley – Leviculus as it was known at the time – is already overrun with tourists, and the constant invasion is far more damaging to the environment and archaeological relics than the Romans ever were.I can save the researchers many years of time by passing on the folklore of the area. It is well known locally that there was a Pizzahut at the Sleaford crossroads one hundred years before Christ. The term ‘thick and crusty’ has been used to describe the locals ever since. I can reveal now that the Saxon Village Hall in Kingsley was formerly the site of a Roman Baths. The ancestors of Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale came from Oakhanger, and fettucine was first farmed at South Hay, cultivated by hand from 50BC until the 8th century. Dante’s Inferno was based upon family legends of a holiday taken in East Worldham, famous for its unsightly hill, mentioned obliquely in Dante’s description of the 4th circle of hell.I am in Beeville, and will be appearing in world wide media coverage of the revelations that the first humans did not come from the Rift Valley of East Africa, but rather from the site of what is now the splendid Best Value Inn, in Beeville. We will be producing evidence linking the ancient remains of a knuckle-dragging, uncouth and amoral primitive to a famous son of Texas, currently living somewhere further north. We will be deferring this news release until the current furore about the opening of the new donut store has passed.

Friday, June 24, 2005

I am going on vacation to Beeville, Texas.Can my esteemed readers (a Mrs Trellis of North Wales) advise me of anything that the astute tourist should see/partake in/shag/eat while in that part of the world?I look forward to reading your comments on my return.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

I meet Philip at Fortnums for coffee. To say that his glumness exceeds the already fairly high standards that he sets would not be an exaggeration.It started with the wedding - “Too many fucking common people there”, he complains. I think that he is alluding to the presence of the Parker Bowles family, the archbishop of Canterbury and Stephen Fry.

Even the traditional ceremonies don’t cheer him any more.”Trooping the fucking Colour? Same every fucking year. They should make it more interesting by making it a steeplechase.” I point out to him that the queen no longer rides on horseback during the ceremony, but uses a carriage. He fixes me with a withering glare. “Are you fucking telling me that it is beyond the fucking wit of the British army to construct a few fucking ramps?”

His family are of decreasing comfort to him. He shows me a spoof letter which he has received, informing him that he is to be returned to Greece together with the Elgin marbles. “Must be that fucking Camelia person”, he conjectures. I disagree, it is too clever for her, but I know it is from within the family because of the atrocious spelling, but the terrible grammar and syntax points towards an Eton rather than a Gordonstoun education. He detests Camilla only slightly less than Diana. “Thank God I won’t be here to see it, but I have visions of her 100th birthday the nation's favourite step-grandmother, with her waving to the cheering crowds from the balcony at the Palace, and then doing something execrable such as flashing her tits”, he sobs.

He performs very few public duties these days, but even this is a cause for further misery. “Visiting a prosthetic device factory in Peebles, opening a nursery school for children of carpet weavers in Swindon, meeting a delegation of Ecuadorian pomegranate growers – are these people taking the fucking piss?” I detect frowns from the staff - anyone else would have been asked to leave by now. He bemoans missing his new favourite television programme because of these engagements. “It’s American, but I have to say it is the funniest thing I’ve seen in years”, he chortles, “it’s called ‘Extreme Makeover’, and what happens is that they visit the home of some downtrodden poor people, send them on holiday, and then while they’re away, they knock their fucking house down. I laughed so much last Tuesday, my false teeth shot across the room and ripped a hole in one of Liz’s favourite Reubens’. Got one of the footmen to fix it with a Pritt Stick and a magic marker – can’t tell the difference.” I don’t have the heart to tell him that what he has assumed to be the end of the program is, in fact, the first commercial break, and that the show then goes on to show a new home being constructed.

At this point the chauffeur comes to collect him, before he gets any more suicidal. I told Liz she ought to send him into retirement at Sandringham, out of the public gaze, for his own good, but she still affects to be fond of the old bugger.

Monday, June 20, 2005

This bizarre site – and I wonder whether it tends towards the tautological to use that phrase – is one of the strange weblogs which exists for no purpose other than the posting of arcane and useless facts. Many of my dear friends, including the lovely Watski are listed as links.

I would like to think that my presence there is due to my knowledge of Indian philosophy rather than the charming little article about inflammation of the glans penis. I am too old to have anything other than chilblains as a sign of physical inflammation from the chest down.

This leads me to refute the allegations made against me by that Zoe woman.I was laying in bed, in a deep sleep, dreaming of angels, the music of Bach, Tom Graveney and other such heavenly scenes, when I was whisked away into the maelstrom that is the psyche of our Belgian friend. Decency prevents me from listing the scenes I witnessed. Suffice it to say that I will resist all invitations to return, and I would counsel you all to do the same. Adam – that means you. You do not do depravity until your third year of college.

I think this calls for an early night – a cup of organic fennel tea and an improving book. It behoves some of us to uphold decorum.

Friday, June 10, 2005

My friends at the BBC report that a man was taken to hospital after being bitten by a spider going about its business in the banana section at Sainsbury’s.

We arranged for his shopping to be dropped at home after the incident, and are extremely sorry that this may have caused him distress.

One can view this statement as either:

1)An apology for the embarrassment caused to the customer when his neighbours realised that he was still shopping at Sainsbury’s. “Did you see that, our Ryan? What’s wrong with Waitrose – it’s good enough for us. He’s never been better than he should be, that Mr Trellis. And now he’s got the cheek to show off that bloody spider bite as well.” Sainsbury’s should at least have arranged to have his groceries placed in a Harrods’ bag prior to showing him up like that.

Or:

2)A paltry attempt at compensation. What will prompt Sainsbury’s to be more generous – a pensioner savaged by a pack of Coyotes in the baked bean aisle? A pre-school child contracting cholera in the organic yoghourt section? Gangs of marauding shelf-stackers randomly mugging pregnant mums in the shampoo section? “I am sorry, Mr Trellis, that you suffered a near-fatal accident as a result of our negligence, so we thought we would drop your shopping off for you. That will be £34.47 + £8.50 delivery (tip discretionary) – Are you saving your rewards?”

This is particularly for the attention of those strange characters who visited this site after typing the phrase “Ant a Dec'sprivatepictures” into Google.

Firstly, welcome. The title of this journal indicates that I have the broadest agenda for discussion, and will only exclude those who seek to harm others (or anyone who irritates me). Have a look round, and stay awhile if anything takes your fancy. Refreshments are available.

Secondly, learn that the GIGO principle applies to search engines just as much as other software.

However, I should point out that you are unlikely to find what you are looking for here. I am not being judgmental or unwelcoming, but I feel that it is incumbent upon me to inform you that I am unaware of the existence of any private pictures about those gentlemen. I might be interested, should the subject of the private pictures be the sort of thing that I infer from the fact that 93.854% of search engine inquiries are the result of a desire for bizarre sexual gratification, although my interest would almost certainly stem from amusement rather than arousal. I know very little about Ant and Dec. I mentioned them here once as names plucked from the ether, as I know that they appear on Saturday evening television. One lesson that the years have taught me is that nothing is to be gained by watching television on the mainstream channels of a Saturday. Even when I was young and TV was a novelty, I found ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ lacking in excitement, and what followed in the schedule to be in the range disappointing to crap. It would take more than a little persuasion to convince me to experiment in the hope of being proved pleasantly incorrect.

It is sad that only the perverts come here (I have nothing against perverts, I number many of them among my close friends) and not those for whom this forum is intended – the confused, those seeking comfort and wisdom, and the socially challenged. (I have nothing against the confused, those seeking comfort and wisdom, and the socially challenged, I number many of them among my close friends).

If you are really looking for pictures of Ant and Dec engaged in mutual unseemly acts, then I suggest that you contact your local member of parliament, or your political representative in the unlikely event that you live outside the UK and have heard of these chaps.

I am sorry to use such coarse language – I would prefer my website to be entirely family friendly, and encourage young visitors (a Miss Trellis of North Wales) to come here and expand their minds – but it just sounds so good. Neither should I pretend that such usage is uncommon at Scurra House. Mrs S and I enjoy nothing more than a free and frank exchange of views.

Scientists at the Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico have accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph in less than a second. The speed of the thrust was a new record for Sandia’s "Z Machine" – not only the fastest gun in the West, but in the world too.

The Z Machine is now able to propel small plates at 34 kilometers a second, faster than the 30 kilometers per second that Earth travels through space in its orbit about the Sun. That’s 50 times faster than a rifle bullet, and three times the velocity needed to escape Earth’s gravitational field.

The ultra-tiny aluminum plates, just 850 microns thick, are accelerated at 1010 g. One g is the force of Earth’s gravity. Doing so without vaporizing the plates was possible because of the finer control now achievable of the magnetic field pulse that drives the flight.

So, here we have it. Millions of years of evolution, and we have learned how to throw plates, really fast. What beats me is that these scientists do not know that this art has been developed to a much finer degree by the housewives of Gujarat over many centuries. Visitors to a traditional North West Indian household will be treated to food the like of which is unknown anywhere else in the galaxy (and this explains why the government discourages me from visiting the coast, lest the country develops a tilt), one of the highlights of which is the plate of chapatis.

As an aside, the compilers of Mr Gate’s dictionary seem to think that chapati should be spelt chapatti. They are wrong, and I can reveal that this is part of Mr Gates’ conspiracy to introduce superfluous letter ‘t’s into words. It stems from his having t at the centre of his surname, and thinks that increased use of this letter will increase his power. It also explains why, when using MS Word, it is almost impossible to use the phrase “President Bush”, without the adjunct “utter tit” mysteriously appearing alongside it. The clever chaps at Google know about this, if you enter the word ‘chapatti’ into their search engine, they say ‘do you mean “chapati”’, and I swear that I can hear the sneer in their little voices.

Anyway, back to the good ladies of Porbandar. Those with keen eyesight will have noticed that all chapatis at any mealtime are exactly the same size and weight, and are always perfectly round. This is achieved by Mrs Patel or Mistry or Desai exploiting scientific phenomena rather than manual dexterity. But actually, the skill they have developed is far more impressive than the ability to accurately roll dough. The dough is vigorously prepared (as a by-product causing exceptional wrist muscles to develop), rolled lightly, and then propelled at enormous speed around the kitchen. The speeds reached are such that the chapati attains optimum shape in order to avoid distintegration.

Sometimes, alas, things get out of hand. The last four visits from our friendly neighbours of the galaxy Brandreth have been wiped out by showers of supersonic chapatis that have escaped from the earth’s gravitational field.

So, bollocks to you, pathetic plate tossers of New Mexico. My missus can outfling you any day. I suppose we can take solace from the fact that they are not wasting their time trying to teach the principle of ‘one man one vote’ to the inhabitants of Florida, or trying to find a cure for malaria.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

It is with some relief that I am unburdened of the task of maintaining one of the world’s most intriguing secrets – the identity of Deep Throat. I have denied knowing the answer to this mystery so many times, and have always been aware that most people would never believe me. In the 1970’s I would sometimes invent an unlikely candidate in order to avoid the constant questioning; Mary Tyler Moore, Mike Brearley and Queen Juliana of the Netherlands among others all spent several months under close CIA scrutiny as a result of my attempting to lay a false trail.

Now that the yoke is lifted, I feel a strange compulsion to be candid about some of the last century’s other great mysteries. I have not taken this decision lightly, and trust that no one will be too upset by these revelations.

1)Did Hitler die in the bunker?

No. It will come as no surprise that Hitler had taken the utmost care to make contingency plans. He had damning information about the British royal family, and was able to blackmail them into taking care of him. He adopted the persona of princess Alice of Gloucester, and despite being caught several times with a mysterious moustache on public occasions, was able to bamboozle everyone outside of a small circle of trusted friends. It was perhaps the curious mixture of hormones that were administered daily to disguise the moustache that allowed him to live to such an astonishing old age. Even I was never certain of the precise nature of the information that caused such an amazing cover up, I know that prince Philip will always blush and change the subject whenever Field Marshal lord Montgomery is mentioned, however.

2)What happened to lord Lucan?

Lucan lived in obscurity for about a year after his disappearance, but like Hitler decided that adopting an unlikely identity was the best form of disguise, and became famous as Sid Vicious in the mid 70s. His drug use caused fear among the secret service, and his frequent lapse into the Eton accent was one of the factors in their deciding to have him assassinated.

3)Why did Harold Wilson resign?

To cover up a scandal involving clotted cream, a member of the singing group, the Bachelors and an assignation in Helsinki.

4) Schrodinger’s cat

Asleep.

5)Why did David Frost become popular?

Bugger off, there are limits to even my knowledge.

If you have enjoyed these disclosures, perhaps you would care to submit your questions to me, and I will make this a regular feature.